Stephanie MacDonald & Alexis Milligan. Photo by Dave Risk.
Buckle in for a wild ride. Ms. Holmes and Ms. Watson: Apt. 2b, playing at Festival Antigonish’s Bauer Theatre until July 20, 2024, is exactly the kind of theatre that perfectly caps off a hot summer day; it is both silly for silliness’ sake, and also clever and unique, while still bringing in cozy elements of the familiarity that comes for many of us from a classic Sherlock Holmes caper.
Off the top Allister MacDonald’s curiously-dressed narrator reminds us exactly why we keep coming back to stories like those first chronicled nearly a century and a half ago by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: it brings us comfort, especially in discomforting times, to escape into a world where we know that, however convoluted, in the end our hero will solve the mystery. We know too, from True Crime podcasts among other things, that this isn’t always or often the way real-life mysteries work, which makes us cling to our heroes- from Sherlock Holmes to Hercule Poirot, from Jessica Fletcher to Columbo and William Murdoch, to Olivia Benson and Nancy Drew, ever more ardently.
Written by American playwright Kate Hamill, in this 2021 reimagining of the mysteries bursting forth from Baker Street, Sherlock Holmes, a woman, played here by Stephanie MacDonald, meets Joan Watson, played by Alexis Milligan, when they are thrown together as roommates during a present-day housing crisis. Holmes is odd and unpredictable, Watson is cagey and secretive, but both get drawn in and pulled closer together by the interesting cases that folks keep coming to the flat begging Holmes to fix or solve for them.
Holmes has a brilliant mind, of course; she is keen and observant, always hypothesizing three steps ahead of the evidence others can see, never overlooking the obvious, and making the kinds of sideway connections that we’ve come to expect of Holmes over the last nearly 140 years. She also holds her cards tight to her chest, seemingly an island sort of person, who puts up with people in her orbit, but doesn’t need anyone but her own genius to fulfill her. Joan, however, vague as she is about where she has come from and what or who she has left behind, is aching for a friend.
More than just their disparate personalities Hamill basically has Holmes and Watson inhabiting two entirely different worlds. Hamill cleverly doesn’t explain to the audience what this Holmes’ relationship is to the canonic Holmes we are used to seeing, as a man, in Victorian England, suggesting that the character themself can be a kind of shapeshifter (as all canonic characters inherently are), who can show up in any time period, and is free from the restraints of any physical description Doyle may have once written about them. Yet, at the same time, this Sherlock always has at least one foot back in Victorian England- it’s part of her charm, her lore, and her eccentricity. Joan, on the other hand, is firmly rooted here in a “post”-pandemic twenty-first century, so while Sherlock often speaks in a way that captures the way he/she speaks in the books, Joan, conversely, speaks more like a character from The Gilmore Girls. The result is a wild clashing of tone and pacing between Stephanie MacDonald and Alexis Milligan, that seems to suggest an absolutely impenetrable chasm between them.
What’s more, all the other characters, a slew of them played by Allister MacDonald and Sophie-Thérèse Stone-Richards, who come and go from 221 Baker Street morph more into Holmes’ Victorian-adjacent world. Allister MacDonald’s Inspector Lestrade, for example, is a police officer character straight out of Doyle, while Stone-Richards brings Irene Adler to vivid life as a kind of funhouse mirror version of Sherlock. Thus, it’s truly just Joan who exists wholly separate from this magical space, while still being able to engage with it- often to her own consternation.
The four actors do a beautiful job of creating this strange world hanging somewhere in-between today and The Strand Magazine, and being zany and campy, and queer, and odd, but also rooting themselves in the history of who these characters have been, while celebrating unabashedly also who these characters could be. Stephanie MacDonald and Alexis Milligan especially oscillate deftly between the very broad and the very nuanced. Most of the play is about shenanigans designed to thwart an evil villain threatening the security of London, but the crux of it is actually the real relationship that develops between these two real humans doing the sleuthing.
Elizabeth Perry’s costumes mix the Victorian and the futuristic in a way that reminded me of the way they often dress inventor James Pendrick (and his associates) on Murdoch Mysteries, which is further pastiching the genre in ways we can find familiar and cozy. Vickie Marston’s set is very clever in the way it also shape-shifts to allow one interior room to change into several different locations, while Andrea Boyd has fun turning the interior into the exterior and back again with just a wry nod to us in the audience so we all know we are collectively suspending our disbelief and making the magic work together.
Boyd’s direction in general keeps the action moving at a rollicking speed, milks all the silly moments for everything they are worth, and carries the breakneck pacing all the way to the end. The actors all seem to have had the breathing room to take these characters and really run with them, especially Stephanie MacDonald’s Sherlock. I’m sure if I were to see the show again there would be more in her performance that I didn’t catch the first time.
Without giving any of the plot points away, I felt like aspects of Joan’s backstory seemed a bit heavy-handed, but I appreciated the way Hamill tied everything together in a satisfying way at the end.
Overall, this is just the kind of fun summer romp full of hilarity and mayhem that sends audiences out into the warm night feeling delighted and cheerful, but also, as Allister MacDonald’s character says, reassured, in the belief that somewhere out there, in a scary and unpredictable world, is someone smart and brave and with an innovative mind, who will keep us safe from harm, and never jump to kittens.
Festival Antigonish’s production of Ms. Holmes and Ms. Watson: Apt. 2b runs at the Bauer Theatre (5015 Chapel Square, Antigonish) until July 20th, 2024. Performances run Tuesday to Sunday at 7:30pm, and Saturdays at both 2:00pm and 7:30pm. Tickets range in price from $30.00 for students and seniors, $35.00 for general admission, and $45.00 for prime seating; they are available here or by calling 902.867.3333. There is a Relaxed Performance on July 16th.
The Bauer Theatre is accessible for those using mobility devices. To book an accessible seat in the theatre call the Box Office at 902.867.3333.
